On Mon, 2026-03-09 at 11:22 +0100, Krzysztof Kozlowski wrote:

On 09/03/2026 03:19, Fernando Fernandez Mancera wrote:

quoted

Historically, the Linux kernel has supported compiling the IPv6 stack as
a loadable module. While this made sense in the early days of IPv6
adoption, modern deployments and distributions overwhelmingly either
build IPv6 directly into the kernel (CONFIG_IPV6=y) or disable it
entirely (CONFIG_IPV6=n). The modular IPv6 use-case provides little to
no practical benefit today.

It does. We all use generic kernels, thus it is one configuration for
all boards and some setups have IPv6 and some not. The ones without IPv6
just don't use that module.

Also, with these generic kernels (so again all machines are using same
ones, e.g. distro) users can easily blacklist the module.

Perhaps it's time for CONFIG_LEGACY_IP to be buildable as a module
instead, in preparation for its deprecation?